Greetings from Japan!

We were so excited to hear from Jake in Japan!  We were on pins and needles waiting for his email Sunday night.  He's about 13 hours ahead of us, so he was emailing us Monday, but it was Sunday for us.  We got an initial email at around 10pm that just said, "Hello family", and that was it!  I waited and waited and stayed up, but nothing else.  So, I finally went to bed and in the morning there was an email that had come at about 4am.  So, then we found out about the typhoon and the trouble they had emailing.  So glad to hear that he was doing well.  Here's his email:

Hello family!! How are you all doing?! Japan is crazy and kinda hard to get used to! Haha. My Japanese is not good at all.. I can barely understand anything. Haha.. pretty sad! There is a typhoon in Japan right now... It's been raining and the wind has been blowing like crazy. Our mission mom sent out a mass text saying that they're expecting power outages and to start cooking a lot of rice ASAP! So we made a couple batches of rice.. This morning it calmed down a bit so we ran to the 7/11 down the road and loaded our emails cause they have wifi. It got bad again but it has stopped now. We got caught in it last night on our bikes and got completely soaked. My rain pants completely ripped so now I only have a rain jacket. :( But anyway, Japan is a super cool place! Way different than America. We haven't eaten at any members' homes or restaurants so we just eat in the apartment. I don't really have an appetite so I usually just eat a bowl of cereal a few times a day. I've already lost 10 pounds.. Haha. We actually had fast Sunday yesterday and then next Saturday and Sunday we'll watch General Conference! And we get to watch it in English, thankfully! It was pretty scary bearing my testimony in front of all those Japanese people.. Haha. So I've been copying some parts of my journal on my iPad every night and I'm gonna send that out! So that will have more details. And I'm sorry I can't send pics from the end of the MTC and the plane 'cause I don't have a cord to get pics from my camera to my iPad! I love and miss you all so much!!

Love Elder Snyder

These are the journal entries we received later in the day:

Monday was the big day we finally left the MTC! Sometimes we didn't ever think the day would come but it happened. So we had to be at the travel office at 6 AM and then we took a bus to the train station in Provo. Then we took the train to the airport. We got our bags all checked in and then went to our terminal. We were walking past a McDonald's and some random guy insisted that he buy us some food, so that was pretty cool. Then we took a plane to Portland and then to Japan! It was such a long flight and I only slept for a little over an hour... But then we made it to Japan and it was awesome! And because Japan is 13 hours ahead of the US, it turned into Tuesday! So we went through customs and then got to meet president Budge! He's such a cool guy. We took about a 2 hour train ride back to the mission home, ate dinner and then they let us go right to bed at about 9:30. Pretty cool day.

Wednesday was pretty crazy! Lots of training stuff. We did some crazy workout with President Budge and then ate Sister Budge's awesome breakfast! We had a bunch of training stuff with the Budges and then had lunch. After lunch we all went with an older missionary and did some proselyting. That was interesting! A lot of people ignored us but we were able to give away some flyers and we had a nice long talk with a guy that said he might want to come to church which was awesome! After that we had an etiquette talk with Sister Budge and then got our iPads! So that was cool and then got dinner and had a testimony meeting with some recent converts. After that was "eikaiwa" which is English class for anyone in the city that wants to come. There were a lot of people there and it was fun!

Thursday we got to meet our trainers and go to our new areas! My trainer's name is  Elder Sanshin. He seems pretty cool so far.. A lot different than me, but cool. He's 24 years old and already graduated from college. There are also 2 other elders in my apartment. Well, my area is a small city called Narita. It's not a huge city and it turns into a lot of hills, trees and farmland... So the best of both, I guess. We took a 2 hour train ride from the mission home to Narita and on the way we were talking to people and giving out eikaiwa flyers. When we got back, we went right to the bank and got out yen so I could buy my bike. We went to our apartment for a little bit and then went on about an hour long walk to the bike shop. then we came back to the apartment, ate dinner and called some of our investigators to see how they were doing and so I could introduce myself! So it was a cool first day in Narita!

Friday morning was my first day in the normal missionary life routine. We woke up, did some exercise, then did our studies. After that we took an hour long train ride to Chiba to a zone conference! That was pretty fun! So then we came back, ate lunch and then went and did some dendo! (Proselyting) We found a guy named Hoshi who seemed pretty interested and we set up another lesson with him! After all that we had a ping pong night and Family Home Evening at the church! That was pretty fun, and then we came back and did our nightly planning and went to bed!

Saturday was a good day! We woke up, exercised and then did our studying. We took the 15 minute bike ride to the church and taught eikaiwa (English class). That was pretty fun. We had about 10 people show up. We taught the advanced class, that had 2 Japanese people. One of them is named Kazu, who is one of our investigators. Kazu is really good at English and I'm really looking forward to my first lesson with him. Then we came back and had weekly panning which takes a few hours. After that, we went on a very hilly 30 minute bike ride to visit a recent convert named Sarath. He is from Sri Lanka and speaks a mix of Japanese, English and Sri Lanken. He's a cool, interesting man. Then we went back home and did our daily planning. That's it!

My first Sunday in Japan! It was fast Sunday today since Japan is so far ahead and Conference will be next week. I got to bear my testimony which was a bit intimidating in front of a bunch of Japanese people! But my companion told me I said everything right so I was pretty happy about that. Haha. So there's a typhoon going through Japan right now and it's pretty hard rain. A lot of the members usually ride their bike to church so a lot of them weren't there today. There were about 40 or so there today but there's usually 60-70. The rain gradually got worse throughout the day so when we went out we just got soaked. But it was fun! Cool first Sunday!

Japan is an awesome place! It was a fun first week! We have a bunch of great investigators with potential to get baptized! Exciting times here in Japan! Love and miss you all!

Love, Elder Snyder

My trainer companion and our clothes hanging up to dry after we got soaked: